Originally Posted by Farflame
I have similar question as JDR13. How much do you need to upgrade your skills in order to advance? Are there some hard areas where high level skills are needed to survive?

I know you aren't asking me specifically this, but in order to make skill upgrading a bit more clear (for you and everyone else), lemme say this first: skills have EITHER no requirements (usually, the top skills on each tree) OR when they do, the requirements are other skills which must be taken previously, of course. Meaning: there is no requirements such: "Skill Z: Aloy must be lvl 10; need to have Skill Y". Skills aren't tied to Aloy's level.

As for your two questions, there are hard fights where high level skills COULD help. Example: you have skills on Brave skill tree that allows you to notch additional arrow(s) on your bow weapons, and the hardest machines have hit points in the thousands, so these skills may help you to faster defeat them. Are they essential? No. Are they useful? Sure. (And here I again reaffirm why the lack of realism when crafting didn't lessen my score when reviewing it - when you notch 1 or 2 additional arrows to fire them all at once, you'll run out of ammo 2 or 3 times faster and you'll soon see why such "crafting realism" would probably ruin the combat here).

Having said that, you don't need to spend a single skill point to finish the game, not even the initial 3 skill points you receive at game's start. Of course, the skills will make you to gather more resources, to do more damage with your weapons, to use some machines (not all of them) as mounts, summing up they'll make your game easier (or less difficult).

Originally Posted by Farflame
Also does character progression allow some variability in character builds? If Im not mistaken there is skill tree for stealth attacks, skill tree for combat and skill tree for some support bonuses, healing or something. It seems there is no real variability there.

Regarding the skill trees, you're right, they are somewhat specialized. Regarding character builds, I can say there is almost zero variability here. What you can do is to prioritize buying some skills first, but in the end, with the amount of skill points you'll have, you can "buy" almost all skills avalable.

Aloy has no class. You can label her as a huntress, like many NPCs do, because ultimately it's what she is. As a huntress, she starts the game with some melee and ranged combat training, as well as a certain level of stealthiness and ability to make potions and traps. Combat, stealthiness and crafting can all be improved by buying skills. But if you're talking character builds in the likes of warrior/rogue/wizard/priest archetypes then no.